


Both Sinner And Saint

by Bosque



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Baptism, Drowning, Gen, POV Second Person, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, but who is that man who lies submerged, no seriously who is he, spoilers for the ending of Bioshock Infinite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 23:56:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4542375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bosque/pseuds/Bosque
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And what name shall you take, my son?" the angel asks.<br/>A name spills out of your lips and echoes a million times over before you can stop it.<br/>"Zachary Hale Comstock."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Both Sinner And Saint

She drowns you and when you've forgotten the taste of air all you can think about is how fucking ironic it is. It reminds you of the way that priest held you under as he baptized you, way back when you first got shot into this beautiful, shining hell in the sky. The water floods your lungs as if trying to wash away the sin festering inside of you. It would take a lot more than water to get you clean though. The blood on your hands wasn't even just red anymore; at this point there was so much of it that it'd become black, filling in the creases of your palms and flooding over the ridges of your knuckles, blotting out everything that had made them a man's hands. They belonged to a sinner, a killer, a monster now.  
And she still held you under like drowning would save you, like death was your salvation. Maybe it was. Maybe this was your reward. And if it was, you never really asked for it. You didn't want this, not like this, never like this. The water seems indifferent though, the way it drips down your throat. She seems indifferent too.  
You'd walked through the gardens after they baptized you and seen the clean men praying, men who'd never known suffering or sacrifice but pretended that they did, pretended that their "superiority" was a burden, begging their gods for the strength to bear their privilege well.  
You, on the other hand, asked God for nothing. And when you fell from the garden into the filthy world below, God, she gave you hell. The water burned your lungs. This was your reward.  
She drowns you and when the world slips out from under you, the circle turns, you swear the circle turns, you can feel it turning away from your broken body to land on you again, just like it's supposed to, just like it always does, you can feel it.  
And it does.  
Except this time it doesn't.  
Something yanks you back up to the surface, leaving the sinner, the killer, the monster that is Booker DeWitt to drown at the bottom of the pond and rest in the mud. The light burns your eyes. You can make out a man dressed in black with a halo flaring out behind him.  
An angel.  
The angel grasps your hand and you cling to it desperately, choking, coughing. Who knew air could taste so sweet? Far away, you hear a voice trying to form words, but failing. It sounds awful, like sputtering gravel choked with fear. It's new and unfamiliar and it terrifies you. What is this place? Who are you? What's happening, what's going-  
"And what name shall you take, my son?" the angel asks. You must answer. A name, a name, you need a name, a good name, a strong name, a name that will be remembered.  
A name spills out of your lips and echoes a million times over before you can stop it.  
"Zachary Hale Comstock."

**Author's Note:**

> The title came from a voxophone recording made by Comstock: "One man goes into the waters of baptism. A different man comes out, born again. But who is that man who lies submerged? Perhaps that swimmer is both sinner and saint, until he is revealed unto the eyes of man." Originally this was just about Booker's death, but I ended up rewriting the ending to make it a version of his baptism at Wounded Knee.


End file.
